


Coming Home

by rage_quitter



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Afterlife, It's really not super sad i promise, Post-Forsaken, Reunions, Sort of a feel better fic, sort of cayde/andal if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 15:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17531354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rage_quitter/pseuds/rage_quitter
Summary: Guardians die. That's what they do. But this time, there's no coming back. This time... Cayde is going home.





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> I still miss my bi disaster space dad :c but i'm making myself feel better by imagining him happy in the afterlife with his son and his wife and his husband. this has been sitting unfinished in my drafts since the e3 trailer and i just fixed it up. it's okay guys cayde's still watching over us and making stupid jokes

_ “I’m coming home, Ace.” _

Everything hurts.

He’s died. He’s died hundreds, thousands of times. 

He’s come back every time. 

He’s felt life scorch over his wires, his systems jolt back online, kaleidoscopes of color explode over his optics before settling into place to zero in on whatever shot him that time. It’s happened so many times, and yet he can never get used to it. 

Dying hurts nearly as badly. Tumbling from cliffs, battered into walls with the force of a train, metal plating shattered and twisted from scorch cannons and slug launchers and line rifles and boomers, crushed under falling rubble, again and again by the hands of other Guardians in the Crucible, just as much as his own kill count goes up, and he takes them for drinks later--

He’s died a lot. Every Guardian has.

This pain is nothing he’s ever felt. It’s every death he’s ever had before at once.

Being without his Light was the most terrifying, painful thing he’d ever experienced.

But it’s worse, this time. This isn’t his Light trapped away.

He’s alone.

His Ghost--

The pain and fear, just a single fraction of a second, is rebounding in Cayde’s mind. He feels like he had taken the shot himself.

He wishes he had.

He was stupid. He was such an idiot, and he made the worst mistake he’d ever made in his long life, in a long, long, long list of very stupid mistakes. He should’ve let Sundance stay hidden, let her heal him in cover, should’ve--

It’s all he can see, for a second, as his soul and his Light crumbles to dust in his chest. Her shell, shattered on the ground around him.

Cayde is empty.

It’s the end of the line. 

He’ll see Sundance again. 

He’ll see a lot of people he loved again. 

He’s alone.

He won’t be alone for much longer.

“I’m coming home, Ace.”

He makes his last stand.

If he has one life to give, damn it, he’s going to do what he can, he’s going to make it count, he’s going to finish what he started, kill the sneering, deranged Prince before anyone else can get hurt--

He can’t see them, the Guardian in every sense of the word, the hero of the Tower, killer of gods, his vision’s in ruin, just violent spatters of colors as he feels coolant spill like blood from his broken body. He cracks out a last joke--they don’t smile, of course not, their face twisted and grieving. 

But it’s okay. He knows it’ll be okay.

They can do this. 

The colors flicker out into black.

It hurts, and it’s black and suffocating and he’s burning, every wire, every molecule is on fire. It’s every death he’s ever had before, and he can’t scream, he can’t move, he’s blinded and paralyzed by the agony that tears through him. He can’t feel his body through the pain.

And then, it’s gone.

It’s still dark. It’s not black, though. It’s violet. Deep, dark violet.

It’s quiet. Silent.

He’s dead.

Is this death?

Nothing but the swirling violet and the unending silence?

Light help him, if he has to sit in this endless void and be aware of passing time, he would lose his mind and--

There are stars.

They blink slowly into existence. He stares at them, winking to life. Little lights in the void. 

He feels the urge to approach them.

He isn’t sure how he’s moving, because he can’t feel his body, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have one. But he does.

The stars don’t get any bigger, but he knows he’s getting closer. Although he can’t see his arm, if he has one, he reaches out. 

It’s like touching a curtain he can’t see. It feels fluid, but not like water, and it has no temperature. He presses forward and pulls it aside.

He moves through the curtain.

Light floods his vision and he squeezes his eyes shut. It’s bright.

He hears something.

Wind.

Birds.

Insects.

Other senses start to respond--he’s standing, he’s standing on solid ground. It feels like grass under his boots. He can smell, and it’s floral, woody, musky. There’s wind, a light breeze, tugging at his cloak. 

He blinks open his eyes.

He’s in a forest. It’s a bright, light place. There is a sky of blue, with wispy clouds. It’s Earth, clearly. Somewhere temperate, like it’s springtime. He’s in a clearing, a tiny meadow.

It’s beautiful.

Cayde turns, slowly, taking in the colors and the feeling of serenity.

He stops.

There was a man standing behind him, watching silently, where Cayde had stepped through the curtain of void. There’s no void now, only more forest, only this stranger.

But--something is odd.

The man is looking at him, an expression somewhere between sorrow and wonder on his face. He’s not dressed like a Guardian. He’s wearing odd clothes. Old clothes from a lost era. Like what people wore in the Golden Age, from images recovered from ruined tech and salvaged photographs.

Cayde doesn’t feel threatened by this strange man.

The man smiles. It’s a smile naturally uneven, crinkling his eyes. Playful, almost, even if that wasn’t an expression he was intending to portray. “Hi,” he says simply. “It… it’s good to see you.”

Cayde chuckles a little ruefully. “Well, it’s nice to see a friendly face. Uh, but, I’m sorry, I’m not sure I know you. Or maybe I do, and I don’t remember. Where, um, where are we?”

The man looks a little sad, but accepting. “I’m still not sure if it has a name. But this is kind of… the afterlife, I guess?”

“Ah. Yeah, kinda figured that. It’s… a lot nicer than I was expecting.”

The man laughs. “From what you’ve been through, yeah. You haven’t been here in a really long time.”

Cayde draws back a little. “I’ve been here before?”

“All Guardians have. You were dead, you know? And then you weren’t. You left.”

“Oh.” Cayde blinks. “Oh, my Light, really? I… wow. Didn’t even think of that. I don’t remember this at all.”

“It’ll come back to you. It always does,” says the man.

“Are you a Guardian?” Cayde asks.

“No. But there are lots of them here now. They remember being here, and they remember their first life, too, after a while. It might take time.”

“I’m really dead, then.” Cayde feels an odd choke in his throat, like his voice modulator is clamming up. “Like, seriously, for real, dead forever…”

“I’m sorry,” the man says quietly. 

“Did I leave a will? I did, I did leave a will, I think I left like, thirty. Who did I leave everything to? Ah, crap, I hope they give Amanda my Glimmer! And that Guardian, they get my gun--ah, crap, my gun!”

The man snorts in bewilderment. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

“That little sniveling--he shot me with my own gun! Ooh, I hope that Guardian kicks his--wait, should I be worried about something else?”

“You don’t have to worry about anything, if you don’t want to. You’re dead.”

“Ugh, I guess I’m just such a soft old man, I can’t help it.” Cayde sighs. “And I had all these responsibilities… I really hope the next guy can handle it. That Dare… oh, man, that’s gonna be complicated. But… Shiro… he could do it… maybe Marcus…”

“Hey, it’ll be okay.” The man holds up both hands. “You’re here now.”

Cayde shakes his head. He peers at the man again. “I… do I know you? I feel like I should know you. If this is the afterlife, and there are other Guardians here… where are they?”

“They’re here. I know that’s vague, but everything changes. Nothing is the same to everyone here. You’re somewhere that you consider home.”

A forest. 

The wilds.

“Is there a way I can look for someone?” Cayde asks.

The man looks over Cayde’s shoulder. Cayde turns his head as well. But there’s nothing.

When he looks back, there’s a woman standing next to the man. She’s a bit older than the man, but he feels his breath catch. She’s beautiful, the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, in a way that isn’t her looks but her soul.

She smiles at him.

“Hello,” she says, and her voice sounds like home. 

“Hi,” he replies. 

“It’s been a very long time,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he replies.

He hears behind him, then, a soft rustle of the leaves. He’s reluctant to look away from her, but turns again.

It’s a visceral pain in his chest, seeing him jumping down from the tree branch he’d been sitting in. He’s still wearing the same cloak. It doesn’t have the red stripe.

“It hasn’t been that long for me,” Andal Brask scoffs, approaching. “I didn’t think being Vanguard would be that hard for you!”

Cayde can only stare at him.

“Did you miss me that much, Cayde?” Andal grins. He still looks sad. “You went out like a badass, though.”

“Andal,” Cayde whispers.

Andal moves past him to join the two people Cayde isn’t sure he knows. He throws an arm around the man. “We’ve all been watching. Crazy that we can do that, we’ll show you how later. Keep an eye on the living, even if we can’t do anything about it. You know, they’ve been great company. Sure, they watched you while we were down there.”

The man snorted. “Andal really couldn’t shut up about you when he got here. Even when he remembered everything.”

“Didn’t really have a family before,” Andal said. “Met a couple people, but I’d died young, too busy with work for a lot. Unlike you. There are so many people who have been waiting for you, watching you.”

Cayde looks at the man and the woman again. 

“Your family is wonderful, Cayde,” Andal says softly.

They both smile at him.

“Ace,” Cayde whispers.

Ace--it’s not his name, but it might as well be, Cayde will remember it soon, he knows it--Ace’s smile grows. His eyes mist. “Hey, Dad.”

Cayde feels a choke again, sheesh, what had the afterlife done to his voice modulator? His optics are burning a little, too. “Oh, Ace, I’ve been writing to you for centuries, I didn’t even know if you were real, but Light, you are, you’re here--”

Ace laughs, reaching up to wipe a sleeve at his face. “C’mere, Dad,” he says, reaching out both arms and stepping forward.

Cayde is more than eager to meet him. Ace is solid, warm, and he feels alive in Cayde’s arms. Ace squeezes him tight. Cayde presses his face into his son’s shoulder, minding his horn--

He blinks in confusion.

Ace must have sensed his sudden change, because he steps back. “Dad?” he asks.

Cayde looks at his gloved hands. He looks to Ace, to Andal, to Ace’s mother--his wife. Slowly, Cayde reaches up to his face.

“Oh my Light.”

He pulls back his hood and runs his fingers through his hair. His eyes widen.

He yanks off his gloves and looks at the tan skin on his hands. He looks up at them all.

Andal chuckles. “You’re lookin’ good,” he says. “The blue was nice, but wow.”

Cayde’s wife smiles. “I missed seeing you like this,” she says. “There aren’t any exos here. You’re you.”

Cayde inhales, feels the air fill his lungs. He laughs in amazement. He holds out his arms to them, and they all clamor to embrace him, warm and feeling so alive.

He’s still worried. There’s so much darkness spiraling in the system. He’s dead. He can’t help them. He’ll be mourned, he’ll be missed.

But for now, he’s surrounded by family. There’s air in his lungs, the people he loves in his arms.

The next voice that speaks brings a delighted grin to his face and a Light to his chest, as he hears the gentle whir of a Ghost’s shell.

“Welcome home, Cayde.”

**Author's Note:**

> come drop by my tumblr @lesbianeliksni


End file.
